PARKED

 
 
And so Parky is parked and another peg from the past
 
Falls untethered. One more wind-torn winner is wasted
 
And we lose one more emblem – after so many this year
 
As time peels the standards that I and those of my age
 
 
 
Still recall as having so many more layers to them.  
 
Entertainment when I grew up was a journey.
 
The method by which meaning feels and makes its way
 
Through the dark of unknown fact and exposure.
 
 
 
Revelation then came through instinct and was not
 
Something framed, or designed; for as this former journalist
 
Probed, famous faces fell open, and for the first time,
 
Admission could be television taught from their minds.  
 
 
 
From Cudworth to Cook, Connolly, Crawford and Cagney,
 
Parkinson praised and raised conversation when at his prime
 
Past the alps, before later years and commercial concerns
 
Caked and covered, and diminishing returns reduced standards
 
 
 
To a place where Meg Ryan in glare alone sought his scalp. 
 
There had also been Dame Helen Mirren before, admonishing him
 
For lust’s levers, and Rod hull through Emu, pressing every
 
Warning button he had. But there was also Shirley MacLaine
 
 
 
Who would have bedded him just by smiling. For such a stare
 
Restores Eunuchs, or causes the most chaste of monks to go mad.
 
Parkinson had charm, ease and grit. As well as that very northern
 
Word; gumption, while at one time defining what is clearly now
 
 
 
A lost art. Naked intelligence on the screen coupled with the kind
 
Of common sense folk remember. A man of his time, Michel mastered
 
The means by which class creates charts – for progress and change,
 
Despite how his later shows settled for the genteel nudging
 
 
 
Of product, and the sometimes tepid retreading of reminiscence
 
Sliding inside anecdote. And yet he could include everyone
 
From Peter Kay to Jacob Bronowski; from Sting to James Stewart,
 
To something close to Larry Adler’s last note. From Orson Welles
 
 
 
To Coldplay and Jamie Cullum; from Ustinov down to Kylie,
 
From Ben Elton to Alan Bennett, with Miller and Moore,
 
Peter C. Everyone in the book from the Bodleian back to Oxfam;
 
As sat in that seat were presented the beauties each ages’ hearts
 
 
 
Yearned to see; Bergman, Bacall, Racquel Welch, and Liz Taylor,
 
Bette Davis; old, caustic and sharp as a blade near the eye,
 
As in Bunuel’s famous film. Not that Bunuel ever made it.
 
Perhaps Ingmar made it, as did Ingrid of course. Can’t think why.
 
 
 
The lack of language no doubt. But then today’s modern English
 
Speakers lack language. Or rather the means by which language
 
As carrying craft defines sea, in both size and shape,
 
Not to mention the majesty within the substantial. We lack it now.
 
 
 
And yet Michael made it, as he sourced a universal strain
 
From each ‘Me.’ Billy Connolly’s dead wife joke was one
 
Of the 1970s brightest moments. Bronowski on Auschwitz,
 
One of its most profound. Perlman and Adler’s violin and harmonica
 
 
 
Summertime, one of its most sublime. It sends shivers,
 
That Mohammed Ali’s not with us, and that Kenneth Williams
 
Has now decades past gone to ground. As has the man
 
Who hosted the world for those in it. From close to Barnsley,
 
 
 
This Barnum for the Circus within every fan has led
 
His former lions within and left those of us who remember
 
A time when the celebrated were still partly myths
 
With no plan on how to apprise and resist the real
 
 
 
Wrapped around us. Parkinson was flesh. Now, its plastic
 
Which surrounds mystery. At 88 years of age, we could see
 
His voice and face gently fading. God’s interviewees
 
Change their channel. As does their investigative friend.
 
The screen flickers and then static resumes. Spirits see.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                   David Erdos 18/8/23
 
 
 
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One Response to PARKED

    1. David, a great eulogy and tribute to a master of his craft. One who was saved from the Pit, in order to mine his own seam of gold, elsewhere.

      Comment by Malcolm Ritchie on 19 August, 2023 at 9:45 am

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